


Lights will guide you home

by lunasenzanotte



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Complicated Relationships, Flying, Gen, Pilots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 18:51:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14551134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunasenzanotte/pseuds/lunasenzanotte
Summary: Silva is a pilot, Villa is a former pilot. Silva's plane has problems and Villa is the only one determined to get him back down in one piece.





	Lights will guide you home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [guti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/guti/gifts).



_Whenever Villa remembers David, he sees him on the first day they met. The blue shirt he was wearing was a bit too big for him, or rather looked that way because David was ridiculously tiny. Not that it mattered, but Villa still couldn’t imagine him taking control of a large jet plane._

_That was until he sat in the cockpit with him for the first time. Then he felt like he was the one with less flight time. David flew planes like he never did anything else, like it was completely natural, the same as breathing or walking. His take-offs and landings were the smoothest Villa’s ever seen, and he had to self-critically admit that his were always a bit on the rough side._

_David was nothing like Villa used to be at that age. He wasn’t reckless, he didn’t like taking risks, where others would check things twice, he’d check them four times. He’d never come unprepared, tired or distracted. There was no camaraderie, no wild parties, no bets and no juggling with the rules. The pilots used to say that there were different laws in the sky than there were on the ground. But not for David, who had his own moral compass._

_Which, obviously, automatically made him a loner in their world. But David didn’t seem to mind. He was the kind of a person who prefers machines to people. Villa seemed to be an exception, but even him had a difficult time getting to David. David would discuss nothing personal in the cabin, and they didn’t quite spend a lot of time together on the land at first. The no-parties policy David had imposed on himself made the occasions to talk even rarer. And yet Villa somehow longed to get closer to him, to the point of feeling like a kid idolizing an older mate, despite David being actually younger and less experienced._

_It took him months until he mustered up the courage to ask David out for a dinner while they were in L.A. He figured that a dinner was innocent enough, and the least likely for David to refuse the invitation. If nothing else, they could eat the dinner and go back to their hotel._

_But David appeared outside the hotel with a smile on his lips, dressed in a pair of light trousers and a white shirt with sleeves rolled up casually. The change was almost shocking for Villa. Almost like he was meeting a different person than he knew from the cabin. David was smiling, laughing, chatting around; he acted like him and Villa were best friends, and Villa realized that they probably already were, he just failed to notice._

_“It will probably sound ridiculous and I’m going to make a fool out of myself, but… I was really excited when I found out I was scheduled to fly with you,” David said in between the fried squid and salad. “The first time, I mean.”_

_“You’re not excited anymore?” Villa asked, feeling strange warmth at the pit of his stomach. “Must be my terrible landings.”_

_David laughed. “It’s not that,” he said. “Although I’ve seen smoother, I have to admit. But… I’m not excited anymore. I’m calm.”_

_Villa blinked. “Calm?”_

_“If I fly with you, I feel safe. Like nothing could go wrong, or if something did, you’d know what to do. I like the feeling. It’s amazing to fly with a calm mind, nothing nagging at the back of it… It’s great to know you got my back.”_

_Villa’s mouth was dry. What David was saying was quite simple, but he almost felt something palpable in the air after he had spoken the words._

_“I’ll always have your back,” he said then._

_David lifted up his eyes from the plate and smiled calmly. “I know.”_

* * *

Villa lives in a house close to the airport. It’s so close to it that the noise of planes taking off and landing is almost deafening and he isn’t entirely sure it meets all the requirements imposed by law and hygiene standards, but he couldn’t live anywhere else. The planes are his lullaby and his alarm clock, and his self-imposed torture as well.

He is used to waking up to a certain flight on a certain day, and to go to bed when the last plane lands. Which is why when his phone rings on the nightstand, his sleeping cycle is completely destroyed and he wakes up utterly confused.

He feels for the phone and looks at the display. Joe Hart. It’s not uncommon for the guys from the airport to call him from time to time to discuss things, but even he has some working hours. Not defined by contract, but by simple common sense.

“Joe, I hope you have a good reason to call me at this hour.”

“It’s David,” Joe says and there’s something off with his voice, something that makes Villa sit up and switch on the lamp. “Something is wrong with his plane.”

* * *

_Villa still remembers the day everything went wrong. They were having dinner with David in a restaurant near Plaza d’Ayuntamiento that evening. They sat outside as it wasn’t hot enough for them to seek a place with air conditioning, and David always preferred eating outside, probably out of relief to be breathing the air instead of flying on it. After the long hours spent in the dry air of the cabin, they craved sunlight and any kind of humidity. David sometimes joked that pilots were a whole different kind of organisms, something like fungi._

_The light was slowly changing from the pink shades into the blue, and the waiter lit the candle in the small glass candleholder on the table as he brought the menus. Villa just rolled his eyes as it now looked like they were on a date, and David laughed._

_Villa grabbed the menu to escape any nagging comment. And that was when all went wrong. Instead of letters, he could only see grey smudges._

_He blinked a few times, blaming it on the wind, then on fatigue. But no matter how hard he tried to force his eyes to focus, he still couldn’t read a word. There was nothing but grey lines._

_“Guaje?” David said, tearing him out of the daze._

_Villa forced himself to tear his eyes from the paper. “What?”_

_“What’s wrong?”_

_“Nothing,” Villa said quickly, putting the menu down with a bit too much haste. “What are you having?”_

_He couldn’t even hear his reply over the blood rushing in his head, and ended up ordering the same thing as David, simply because he couldn’t do anything else._

_The queasy feeling in his stomach was telling him that his life would never be the same again._

* * *

By the time Joe suggests Villa get to the tower, he is already half-dressed, while still listening to Joe explaining the situation to him with the phone on loud to keep his hands free.

“He got low oil temperature and high oil pressure on one of the engines, but nothing that would explain that. They thought they were just false warnings, but then they got fuel imbalance warning. Declared fuel emergency three minutes ago.”

“If he’s flying an A3330, transferring from left to right should fix that,” Villa says and grabs his keys.

Joe doesn’t comment on Villa knowing exactly what plane David is flying. “But it didn’t,” he says.

“Who is the second pilot?” Villa asks.

“Milner.”

Villa thanks God that it’s at least someone with enough experience. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

* * *

_The medical tests were merciless. Night blindness. Villa knew his career was over before he even spoke to his superiors. Apart from heart problems, worse eyesight was the second most common cause of an early retirement. When he found himself in his superior’s office, with the ominous medical records on the table, he knew he was counting his last minutes._

_“The tests show that your nyctalopia unfortunately isn’t caused by vitamin or retinol deficiency. It’s retinis pigmentosa. That means that basically your rod cells in the retina gradually lose their ability to respond to the light,” Dr. Benítez explained, more to Flores, Villa’s boss, than to Villa himself. They were solving a situation the company has found itself in, rather than the situation Villa was in._

_“You know what this means, Villa,” Flores sighed._

_“That I can’t fly anymore,” Villa said bluntly._

_Flores looked almost sorry. “We wouldn’t want to lose you, Villa,” he said._

_“Yeah? So make an exception, for fuck’s sake!” Villa snapped._

_“You know that we can’t,” he sighed. “Rules are rules. You shouldn’t be driving a car with this, how can we let you fly a plane?”_

_“That I can’t read small print when it gets darker doesn’t mean…”_

_“And if it gets worse? Because from what I’ve heard from Dr. Benítez, it will.”_

_Benítez only nodded solemnly. The clown. “It’s likely that with time, your daytime vision could also be affected. It’s a progressive disease. Unfortunately.”_

_Villa felt like he had to grab onto something now. “You said that you didn’t want to lose me.”_

_“Exactly. Your experience is extremely valuable to us,” Flores said. “There are plenty of things you can do on the ground.”_

_Villa walked out without a word and banged the door behind him._

* * *

Villa parks the car on the parking lot close to the tower. He rarely comes here in person. His job doesn’t require him to, and if he needs to discuss something with the staff or controllers, he normally calls them. The less people he sees in a day, the better.

He runs his card through the reader and the door opens with a buzz. He heads to the elevator and presses the button. The door takes an eternity to close and the elevator is too slow for his taste now. As he gets off and walks to the control room, he notices the faces of people passing him by. They don’t greet him or look at him, they don’t even notice him, but there is something unsettling about their faces. They have the faces of people who know that what’s happening isn’t good. Villa runs his card through the last scanner separating him from the control room.

He enters the room just at the moment David calls Mayday.

* * *

_David appeared at his doorstep that evening. Villa expected him to be mad, as he had the right to be. He’d kept it all from him. He’d kept it from everyone. The scene in Flores’ office was embarrassing enough for him. He didn’t need anyone else to pity him._

_“I thought you had my back,” David said quietly._

_“Not anymore, it seems.”_

_“It also seems you don’t even trust me enough to tell me things.”_

_“It seems like you know them anyway. The news spread quickly. I bet Benítez was more than happy to tell everyone.”_

_“Fuck Benítez,” David snapped, and it almost left Villa speechless because he had probably never heard him swear before. “It’s not about him, nor anyone. It’s about you.”_

_“What is there about me?” Villa laughed humorlessly. “I’m done. I’ll be glad if my eyes stay useful for normal life, if they’re already useless for flying.”_

_“It doesn’t mean you have to leave. It’s not the only thing you can do.”_

_“What do you suggest, that I become a flight attendant?”_

_David laughed loudly, and no matter how miserable and angry Villa was, he had to smile as well. “Well, that would be the only job I can’t imagine you doing,” David said. “When I imagine a passenger asking you for some juice, and you give them that bitchface of yours…”_

_The image was indeed amusing. Villa felt the anger leaving him, or at least he didn’t feel like he would explode in the next second anymore._

_David took Villa’s hand into his. “You love planes.”_

_“I love flying.”_

_“This is the closest you can stay to it,” David said. “Don’t leave.” There was a subtle “don’t leave me” in the last sentence. But all Villa could think of was that whatever was between them, and whatever could be, was already gone._

* * *

Villa practically rips the headpiece off the controller’s head.

“David?” he says, rules, regulations and policies be damned.

“Guaje,” David’s voice sounds in response and there is something unfamiliar in it when he says: “It’s so nice to hear you again.”

Villa can read his voice well enough to decipher it, and what he learns deeply unsettles him. David is afraid.

* * *

_Villa let David talk him into accepting some job Flores offered him, a job he didn’t even know existed before, and quite probably Flores made it up just to give it to Villa. The description of it was all too fancy, using words like “strategies”, “analysis” and “effectiveness”, but Villa could read between the lines. He was supposed to tell people what they could improve, and they most likely wouldn’t listen to him._

_He had hoped he could at least become an instructor, but they wouldn’t let him inside a plane, simply because should anything go wrong, he’d have to take control of it, and they couldn’t risk anything. He would probably be grateful even for supervising the simulation trainings, but he faced the same problem inside the simulator that he did in a real plane. He was stuck to the ground, paper and pen, numbers and maps._

_As sure as David was in flying a plane, he struggled in navigating through Villa’s moods. Sometimes he would try to discuss something with him, only for Villa to accuse him of trying to make him feel important. The other time he would talk about random things, only to make Villa feel like he was completely left out, forgotten by those he used to work with._

_So many of the times David called him a “pain in the ass” the words were not said in a joking manner, and Villa felt like he deserved it, but he couldn’t help himself. What could cure him was just a touch away, and he couldn’t have it. He was dying of thirst right next to the source._

* * *

“They diverted to the Azores,” Joe Hart informs Villa as he quickly studies all data they have available. “But they’re still about 130 miles away from the air base.”

“That’s quite doable,” Villa says, doing quick maths in his head.

Before he can quite put the plan together, David’s voice sounds from the radio again.

“I have no power to the instruments… and no visual.”

“Joe can still see you on the radar,” Villa says. “He can give you directions.”

“I’m afraid that it won’t be of much help,” David replies and Villa can almost see his sad smile.

“Why?” he asks, feeling his stomach lurch even before David replies.

“We’re flying on empty now.”

* * *

_The first year without flying came to an end. Villa hated his new life at that point. And he also hated his old one and everyone who belonged in it. He didn’t know if it was losing his job that made him so bitter, or rather losing David. Of course, given the nature of their work and the size of the company they worked for, they wouldn’t be together all the time, but they would collide two or three times a month, sometimes more often, if they could help it. Now, David was all around the world, roaming the sky, while Villa was sitting at the airport, flying once or twice a month to some conference, and only as a passenger._

_Adapting to his new life was hard. Watching David grow was even harder. He was living the life Villa always thought they would live together, and David seemed to be living it just fine without him. He was building his reputation, getting more and more transatlantic flights, the beginners now looked up to him the way they used to look up to Villa. And although in the very bottom of his heart, Villa was happy for him, for all he had now, it hurt so much that he didn’t want to witness it._

_Even if their schedules would allow it, he wouldn’t see him. He’d do everything to change his plans at the last minute so that they would miss each other at some destination, until it became so obvious he didn’t even try to make up any excuses._

_David called him a coward. He was absolutely in the right to do so._

* * *

“We thought it was the computers, but all this time we were really losing fuel,” David says. “Engine one’s gone too.”

“Sea landing?” Milner suggests.

“That’s nonsense,” Villa shakes his head, although the second pilot can’t see him. “You are practically gliding, for fuck’s sake!”

He grabs a pencil and a notepad from Hart’s table and starts counting. A cup of coffee lands in front of him.

“Thanks, Joe,” he says and takes a sip to wake his brain up a little more. He’s good with numbers, but not at this hour. “David, listen to me. With your altitude and the descent rate, you still have at least fifteen minutes. You can make it to the airport.”

“I think not,” a voice says behind his back.

Villa doesn’t even have to turn around. He knows Flores’ voice all too well.

“They have no electrical power and no hydraulic power,” Flores says. “The flaps and spoilers are uncontrollable, so are the alternate brakes. Even if they make it to the air base…”

Villa slams the cup of coffee into the table and turns around. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“That maybe we don’t want an inoperable plane above an inhabited island.”

“So maybe we want to ditch them into the sea, right?” Villa barks, turning around to face his boss. “Because sea landing is pure suicide in this situation.”

Flores looks around, like he’s looking for confirmation. All the controllers look like they would rather be anywhere else but here. Only Joe Hart dares a small nod.

“You really think he can do it?” Flores asks after a moment of silence.

“If no one else, David can,” Villa says firmly.

“Fine,” Flores says and looks at Hart. “Tell the air base to prepare for a crash landing.”

* * *

_The last time he saw David, they were in Valencia. It was harder to escape from there, as it was the place they both called home, despite not having a real home._

_He almost thought he had managed to lay low well enough, until David simply rang his bell one evening._

_“Why do I feel like I’m being punished for something that isn’t my fault?” he asked._

_“I don’t know,” Villa said. “I feel exactly the same way. And it was you who made me do this. Stay.”_

_“If you’re not happy, then why don’t you quit?” David shrugged._

_Villa just kept looking at him. All the time, all those months he hated everything and everyone, this was the only one option he never contemplated._

_“Because it would kill me,” he said simply._

_David held his gaze for a long time. “Then stay,” he whispered._

_Villa nodded. There was nothing else he could do._

* * *

Villa calls David’s call sign this time, just because Flores is in the room and he would feel awkward not to follow the right procedure.

“I was afraid you were dead in there,” David says in response. “I can see the air base now.”

“Just a little discussion,” Villa says with a side glance at Flores. “Listen, you are too high and too close. You need to get rid of the excess altitude and speed.”

“You do realize what plane we are in, right?” Milner’s voice growls from the radio.

“Roger that,” David says calmly, almost like Milner is sitting somewhere else. “I’ll try a full turn, see where it gets us.”

Villa watches Hart, who gets back to the radar, carefully watching the position of the plane. The plane makes a full turn, then proceeds to make a few S turns. It all looks like a dance, and if it weren’t for the situation, Villa would just stare in awe.

“I see the runway,” David says. “Let’s do this.”

The clack of the door lets them know that Flores has just left the room.

“Apply emergency braking when you touch down,” Villa says, immediately realizing that he couldn’t say anything more useless.

“Guaje?” David says.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for everything.”

Villa’s mouth is dry. The radio goes silent.

The moments he lives after that are completely void of past and future. It’s just what it is. A table with two empty cups of coffee. The papers with the numbers scribbled in his hand.

Hart’s hand is gripping his shoulder tight, but he can’t feel anything. It’s completely silent in the room. Villa can hear his own heartbeat.

Then the radio is alive once again.

“Guaje?” David’s voice sounds from it.

“Yeah?”

“Greetings from the ground,” David says and then starts to laugh.

* * *

Villa waits at the airport. David almost falls in his arms. He looks dead tired, but he’s in one piece, and that’s all that matters.

“You are a fucking magician,” Villa whispers. “And I don’t get how you managed to get inside a plane right after that.”

David gives him a tired smile. “I just wanted to go home,” he says. “Get at least some sleep before they start roasting me.”

“They won’t. You’re a hero.”

“They’ll still roast me. If we lost the fuel due to leakage, transferring it was a mistake. My mistake, no matter what. I was in command.”

“It wasn’t. I would have done the same thing, given the warnings. You couldn’t have known.”

David just shrugs and leans on Villa’s shoulder, and Villa feels the best he’s felt since that evening at Plaza d’Ayuntamiento.

* * *

The investigation takes months. They conclude that David really shouldn’t have transferred the fuel. He should have shut the affected engine down and fly with one. It sounds quite reasonable now, but Villa knows he would have done the same thing David did if it was him in the plane with the systems acting that way, and he’s ready to defend him even from his grave.

He also listens to the records. He never tells David that he did. He listens to the calm voice David uses to instruct the passengers and crew, marvels at the way he managed to erase all emotions from it, those that he let slip just a tad in his conversation with Villa, and fully in the cabin conversation with Milner.

More than ever, he regrets not being there. He’s not sure if he would have been more useful in the cockpit than he was on the ground, but he feels like he should have been there.

* * *

David rings his bell the night after the final investigation report is published. He sits on Villa’s couch and looks at him with a peaceful smile.

“I’m done,” he says. “I’m not going back to flying.”

Villa blinks. “Because they listed pilot error as one of the causes?”

“Maybe so.”

“It doesn’t even make sense, and they stated they’re not going to penalize you. You saved three hundred people. You’re a hero.”

“Then I’m leaving as a hero,” David shrugs. “I realized that… when we worked together, I was enjoying it. I was aiming for something. Were you there with me, I would maybe even enjoy the feeling of being a hero. But like this, I was only happy to be back on the ground, and meeting you at the airport was the best thing of all. I think going back wouldn’t make sense.”

“I think I don’t understand anything,” Villa shakes his head.

“Doing it without you is no fun,” David smiles. “That’s what I’m trying to say.”

Villa laughs incredulously.

“The question is…” David looks at him. “What else can we do?”

“Flight attendants?” Villa suggests. “I’ve been working really hard on my bitchface lately.”

“I’m sure you have,” David laughs and hugs him. “If I knew it was going to take so much for us to start talking again, I would have nearly killed myself sooner.”

“It didn’t even take that much,” Villa frowns. “I mean, the plane could still be repaired.”

David looks at him and smiles. “Exactly,” he says. “The plane could still be repaired.”

**Author's Note:**

> *Inspired by the real events of the Air Transat Flight 236.
> 
> *I have no idea if dark-blindness works that way, as I don’t suffer from it, but my mom does and this was exactly how she found out she did. 
> 
> *Please, please, disregard all that I got wrong about flying. I actually had aviatophobia in my childhood/teenage years, and started to watch documentaries about aviation catastrophes in order to get rid of it (a weird way, but it worked). I got really passionate about flying and considered becoming a pilot myself, but I’m just not good with numbers and stuff, so I thought for the safety of people, I better give up on that dream. So I totally am aware of all the things I altered for the sake of this fic, like you totally would call Mayday to your closest station, etc. etc. Let’s just pretend we know nothing about that.


End file.
